By Grace Stanley
A team of researchers from Cornell Tech is reimagining how technology can support users with speech disabilities – not just in functional speech, but also in making real-time jokes during conversations.
The research explores how artificial intelligence interfaces can help users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technology deliver witty remarks while talking with others – a way of communicating that’s often made impossible by the slow pace of traditional AAC systems.
“Humor is a crucial form of social interaction and is usually taken as a trivial thing. But for someone with a speech impairment, it is not trivial to match the timing of the conversation,” said the paper’s lead author, Cornell Tech Ph.D. student Tobias Weinberg, who lost his ability to speak at 15 and now uses AAC technology. “Losing my ability to speak from one month to the next, I had to learn to reshape my humor to this new form of communication. This research tries to channel that experience.”
Read more at the Cornell Chronicle.
Grace Stanley is a staff writer-editor for Cornell Tech.
